Debugging problems and testing corner cases (i.e., conditions that are influenced by many factors and difficult to create) within networking hardware typically requires two major components—controllability and observability. Without these components, much debug and test work is reduced to viewing the system as a black box, which impedes rapid progress. The use of “breakpointing” is known in software testing and debugging operations, and typically involves setting traps at certain key points in the code. When these traps are encountered, control is handed to the user who can then determine the state of the system (e.g., by reading variables and examining memory contents). However, such functionality is not available within networking switch/router hardware products, making many aspects of debug and test more difficult and time consuming to achieve.